Traditional colour tattoo of an eyespot moth with grey wings, orange and brown accents and black outlines, placed on the stomach above the navel.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eyespot moth above the navel

Traditional · Other · Mixed · Photo

A large moth with outspread grey wings and four cream eyespots sits centrally on the skin, with antennae extending upwards and a segmented grey body. The bold black outlines and smooth shading on the wings give a traditional look, with orange, rust and brown details on the lower wings and body. A partial design, possibly a scroll with red and blue elements, is cut off at the left edge of the frame.

Traditional Other Moth Wing Antennae Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mule stopped at the bend below Hob's Cairn and would not take another step. I held the lantern up and saw why. Moths had settled along the drystone wall, grey as wet slate, and each one had opened its wings to show two dark eyes ringed in cream.

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My father carried salt over the Ruddock Pass for thirty years and never lost a beast to the weather. He used to tap the wall stones with his stick and tell me to look for the eyes, because a moth that wears eyes on its wings is a moth a bird will think twice about. I laughed at him then, up at the col with the wind tearing the words from his mouth.

Tonight the wind had dropped and the snow was coming in soft and sideways. Dorcas trembled and lowered her head, and I understood that the eyes were not meant for birds. They were fixed on the path, holding us back from the drop where the old packhorse went over in the bad winter. I put my palm flat on her neck and talked nonsense until she lifted a hoof.

We went up slowly beneath them, one wall at a time, until the hut door showed yellow through the flakes. At the threshold I looked back. Every moth had folded its wings shut, and the wall was only grey stone again. Dorcas walked on without fuss, and I was grateful to whoever had kept watch.